It’s another month where I have nothing of any real interest to say, and this time I don’t even have anything I’m particularly pumped about sharing here. I read Drew Barrymore’s memoir Wildflower, which I really liked, but beyond that my life is pretty much a void. (Not in the nihilistic, “existential crisis” sense, just in the sense that I JOB, I get home, and I veg for a couple of hours before I bed, rinse, repeat. Weekends are spent sitting here trying to think of things to write, chatting with a few friends here and there, and zoning in and out of reality like I often do.)
I went back and forth on whether or not I would do the July session of Camp NaNoWriMo — I didn’t in April — but I never reached a decision. I might. I might not. If I can’t even scrounge enough determination to make that decision, I’m guessing it will be “not.”
WRITING IN PUBLIC
My report for this segment isn’t a grand proclamation of productivity, but it’s not exactly nothing, either. Technically, most of it doesn’t even fit in with the name of the segment.
From the genuine “writing” perspective, other than what I’ve written for this entry, was a fairly long comment on Facebook decrying an anti-trans post someone I love shared. I only counted the words on my spreadsheet because of the length. It wasn’t just a growly “You’re wrong about everything” kind of post. It was considered, thought out, and debunked every aspect of the post point by point. I put it in the “unpublishable nonsense” column even though it’s technically already published.
Did I write anything on an actual story or novel? Nope. Pretty typical stuff. No one is surprised. Except for me, because I somehow keep thinking I’m going to write something every weekend when I sit down to do it. What was that definition again, Mr. Einstein?
I did, however, accomplish two things. Both, admittedly, in the same day; that’s how simple they were.
The first is that I utilized Draft2Digital‘s* partnership with Apple to create a new AI narration for Seeing Red. Unlike the one for Google, still available, I don’t think I will have access to the files in order to send them to other AI-admitting outlets. That’s fine. I’m perfectly okay keeping this atrocity limited to two sales channels. I don’t know when it will be available on Apple. Their QC process seems to be heftier than Goggle’s was, and I am not permitted any participation at all, it seems. All I got to do was pick the narrator, and even that was simply by selecting the book’s genre. (Suspense, for the record., though I might also include it in horror if I ever feel like I need something new to do to avoid writing.)
The other thing I did that day, speaking of horror, was create a hardcover edition of Comedy of Terrors* at that Long River place.
It’s funny — but not in a humorous way. I have a lot of problems with the way Amazon treats authors, both in the main store and at their Audible arm, but I keep putting things up for sale there. I get more traction in other places, to be honest, but I still can’t find it in myself to de-list stuff there. And the hardcover is exclusive to them until D2D Print expands to hardcover. (Yeah, I could use Ingram Spark, but that would be yet another thing I’d have to explore. Not sure I’m up for that before I can get something new ready to put out.)
Nothing groundbreaking. But I did a thing. Or two.
GAMING THINGS
Path-freaking-finder! Yeah, that’s right! We played a partial session of Skull and Shackles a couple weeks ago. The “dead” character did not return, surprisingly. Instead, the player decided to bring in the character that he was co-playing in the catch-up sessions that he and our friend did not finish.
Did not finish? What the heck?
We as a group have opted to backtrack to where the other two left off. The three of us who did not die will not earn scenario or adventure rewards until we rejoin the point we left off, but this way we don’t have to wait for “dead” and friend to play outside our normal playing times. It’s been a really long time, and I’ve been aching to play again. It’s a good middle ground.
Why a partial game? Well, that’s easy. By the time we made the decision, it was too late to play a full scenario, and it took a bit to get all the characters transferred to a new save game. (My save had become corrupted in the interim, and we were missing cards that we needed in order to do the backtrack.)
The bright side to this is that someone else is hosting the game now, and it’s no longer up to me to set everything up each time. Of course, so far I’ve had to explain several of the things I was doing, because I don’t have access to all the host powers in Tabletop Simulator.
Pathfinder is back, baybee!
WRAPPING UP
I got nothing. I’ll just wrap this up with the usual implores: Be kind. Be love. Be a force for good in the world.
Hopefully I will have something entertaining to talk about next month.
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